A man tries to escape a demon – one impervious to exorcism and unconcerned about ruining her cunning slate-blue silk New Look frock with a little blood. Actually, a lot of blood. He quickly mixes up a summoning salad and traces out a blood sigil. In a blast of light and energy, he tumbles through a closet door, coming to a stop at Dean’s feet.

“Which of you is John Winchester?”

The boys buzzah while the man demands an answer. Time is of the essence! He dabs the blood from his nose, trying to understand what he did wrong. If one of them isn’t John, they must at least know him. “I’ll tell you what, when one of us falls out of your closet, then you can ask the questions.” The man ruefully chalks their encounter up as a “marvelous, tragic, misunderstanding” and bids them good day. HE SAID GOOD DAY. He slips the cuffs Dean attempts to clap on him, leaving the boys shackled to the bed frame instead. He scans the parking lot and his gaze comes to rest on Baby. She seems right. She seems good. He notes the year on her tags and shrugs it off. “I guess the Mayans were wrong.” He looks around and then smashes out Baby’s driver side window. DEATH! DEATH TO HE WHO WOULD DEFILE METALLICAR! Dean has a gun on him before he can further violate Baby with a hotwire. The man is lucky Dean doesn’t just shoot him then and there on general principle.

Back inside the motel room they run through the usual drill. The man endures it with an air of weary condescension. He’s quite certain that his circumstances are beyond Dean’s “alpha male monkey” understanding. “Violence will not help you comprehend this any easier.” No, but it’s fun and it makes Dean feel better. He gets shouty and pistol wavy. Here is what he does understand. “Some asshat pops out of my closet asking about my dad, smashes up my ride, so why am I not getting violent again?” Dean realizes that perhaps he’s said too much just as the room begins shaking. The man tells them to run, but it’s too late. The demon is through the portal. He should have locked the door. Give her what she wants and she promises to kill him and his friends quickly. Or don’t. She psychically flings Sam and Dean aside and settles in to do this the hard way. Dean pops up and shoves Ruby’s Knife into her back. It sparks and sizzles and only succeeds in further ruining the fabric. THAT IS MAHOGANY SILK! It does slow the demon down long enough for the trio to RUN AWAY! RUN AWAY! When Dean finally stops the car, the man staggers into the weeds to vomit. He’s not accustomed to such thrilling adventures. He tells them that the woman is called Abaddon. She’s a demon. Sam is all like, we picked up on that, thanks. She’s from Hell and the man is from Normal, Illinois. 1958. Really? Go on. Pull Dean’s other leg.

HAH! The man demands again to be taken to John Winchester, but that’s not going to happen. He’s dead. The man looks gobsmacked. Sam challenges, what’s it to him?

“Everything. I’m his father.”

The boys can tell by the plinking keys of the “Family Theme” that he’s telling the truth. They repair to a diner to process the existence of Henry Winchester. Sam is convinced. Dean is too, but reminds Sam that “H.G. Wells over there left dad high and dry when he was a kid” and John hated him for it. Henry sits apart from them staring at a snapshot of him and wee!John. They were playing baseball when it was taken. Sam reasonables that maybe Henry didn’t run out. Maybe he got stuck. He points out John’s own failings as a father, which Dean stubbornly brushes aside. John had his issues, but he was always there for them. Oh, Dean. Oh, sweetie. Seriously? John was there except when he wasn’t. Like the fight with Mary, that Christmas, the time there was something in your old house, and when you almost died. In conclusion, John is the worst and Dean hates time travel. Moving on. They return to the table and Henry tries to put a bright face on things. “After all, despite everything, I’ve just met my grandsons, haven’t I?” He formally introduces himself and Dean is resolute in disliking the man, refusing even to shake his hand. Dean just wants to focus on cleaning up Henry’s mess, starting with why the Knife didn’t kill Abaddon. “Because demons can’t be killed by run-of-the-mill cutlery. At the very least you’d need an ancient demon killing knife of the Kurds.” Dean reaches into his coat, exposing the handle of Ruby’s Knife. “That’s what this is. Demon gave it to me. We have been around this block so many times.” Sam wonders if the portal is still open. If they can’t kill Abaddon maybe they can shove her back where she came from. Henry agrees that he can recreate the sigil. It will just take his blood, an angel feather, tears of a dragon, a pinch of the sands of time, and at least a week for his soul to recharge. They stare at him all what in the who now? He tapped into his own soul? Henry is surprised that they don’t know all this already. He asks what level of knowledge they are. They are Men of Letters, aren’t they? Like their father, who taught them the ways? Sam tells him John taught them how to be hunters. Henry thinks Sam is making a joke, but his laughter soon sours. He’s appalled by the idea. “Hunters? Hunters are … hunters are apes. You’re legacies!”

He has them drive him the four Pat Boone filled hours back to Normal. He stands outside the Men of Letters sanctum. It now houses a comic book shop, but none of that is their unthinking, unwashed, shoot first and don’t bother to ask questions later hunter concern. Sam reminds him that they’re also John’s children, so Henry can just stow it. He realizes Sam is right. They are part of a generations long line of preceptors. Beholders. “Chroniclers of all that which man does not understand.” They share their findings with a few trusted hunters. The very elite who do the rest.

“So you’re like Yodas to our Jedis?”

Never mind, Henry. You’re out of your element. Sam doesn’t understand why they, and no one they know, has ever heard of the Men of Letters. Henry looks for answers inside the comic shop. He asks Sam for his walkie talkie and then asks the phone for Delta-457. He’d also like to know if it’s raining. “Who are you not calling?” Henry insists that they can’t all be gone. There must be an Elder still alive who can help them stop Abaddon and tell him what to do with the matchbox of mystery he carried with him from the past. Dean asks the goth girl behind the counter if they can hijack her computer. Henry gawks at the laptop. What sorcery is this! They actually can fit a computer in that room! Dean spins it around to Sam because, once again, everything Dean ever learned from Frank has magically evaporated from his pretteh, pretteh head so that he can eye flirt with the goth girl for plot reasons that will soon become apparent. Sam Google-fus an article about the ‘tragic fire’ in the ‘gentlemen’s club’ on August 12, 1958 that left four men dead. He reads through the list of names, and Henry pings on one. Albert Magnus. Henry leads them to a secluded burial ground in the woods. “These were my friends. My mentors. Our last defense against the Abaddons of the world.” Albert Magnus, however, was the greatest alchemist of the middle ages and an alias used by the Men of Letters. Henry theorizes that the name was planted in the article as a clue. Dean notes the aquarian star on one of the tombstones. It’s the crest of the Men of Letters. “Representing great magic. Power.” It’s missing from the grave of Larry Ganem, replaced by the Haitian symbol for speaking to the dead. This is the message. “You boys ever exhume a body?” Oh, Henry. When aren’t they digging up a body? Digging, digging, digging. They find the remains of a World War I veteran and suppose that Larry survived Abaddon’s attack and assumed Capt. Thomas J. Carey III’s identity. Excellent work detectives! Now cover up this hole and let’s be on our way.

Abaddon strolls into the comic shop. She loves what they’ve done with the place. Goth Girl tells her she’s got the wrong night. “Carrie screening’s on Sunday. I dig your costume though.” Abaddon puts her hand on the girl’s shoulder and pulls her in close. The demon breathes out and a thin stream of black goo enters the girl’s body. “Show me what you’ve seen.” Her eyes go black and Abaddon gets the download. She sucks the goo back out of the girl who gasps and begs Abaddon not to hurt her. The demon smiles and glances down at Goth Girl’s t-shirt. A Betty Boop style cartoon pinup smiles back at her. Underneath her is written “The Devil Made Me Do It”. Abaddon likes Goth Girl’s style.

The boys get a motel room for the night. A mass of black clouds hang over the low slung building, and kudos to the design team because that is one beautiful picture. Sam and Dean sit together at the small table. Sam is reading John’s demonic day planner and Dean is staring at Henry with his thinking very, very hard thinkie face on. Where does he know the tune that Henry is whistling? Henry duhs that it’s “As Time Goes By” from Casablanca. Sam reminds him that John used to whistle it from time to time. Henry remembers taking wee!John to the drive-in to see Abbott and Costello Meet the Mummy. “It scared the beeswax out of him” so Henry bought him a music box that played the song to help him sleep at night. Dean tries to resist letting in the idea that Henry was a caring father. Sam is just amazed by the thought of John ever being scared of anything. Dean shifts back to business and announces that county records put Tom Carey as alive and living in Lebanon, Kansas. “As a very happy 127-year-old.” Sam hits pay dirt as well in the journal. John wrote an entry detailing the torture of a demon who claimed to have made his bones working for Abaddon. “Who, turns out, is a Knight of Hell.” The boys don’t know what that means, but nothing about it sounds good. Henry tells them the Knights of Hell are hand picked by Lucifer himself. “They are the first fallen, first born demons. Legend has it that Archangels had killed all of them.” Which if true, means Abaddon is the last of her kind. Henry asks to see the demonic day planner. Dean’s energy instantly goes tense. That book is his father and he doesn’t care for just anyone manhandling it. Certainly not the man his father hated. Sam explains it’s a hunter’s journal. He assumes the Men of Letters used something similar? Henry intended to. He sent away for one the day before his initiation. “This one, I believe.” He folds back a picture clipped to the cover to reveal the embossed initials HW. Henry realizes he doesn’t make it back from this time. Sam hedges. They don’t know for sure. “All we do know is that Dad never saw you again. He thought you ran out on him.” Henry sits down, trying to take it all in. John was a legacy. Henry was supposed to teach him the Ways of the Letters. “Well, he learned things a little differently. The hard way. Surviving a lonely childhood. A stinking war. Only to get married and have his wife taken by a demon. And later killed by one himself. That man got a bum rap around every turn. But you know what? He kept going. And in the end, he did a hell of a lot more good than he did bad.” Henry wishes he had been there for his son, but it’s the price they pay for upholding great responsibility. Dean bitterly reminds Henry that his responsibility was to his family. “Not some glorified book club.” Henry insists that as a legacy he had no choice. He can just keep telling himself that.

Henry reads through the journal while Dean catches his four hours. He is, as per usual, stretched out on top of the covers, fully clothed. You can’t see from Henry’s POV, but I’m going to bet Dean still has his boots on. I know I’ve said this before, but seriously. Dean hasn’t had a proper good night’s sleep since Season 2. Sam whacks him awake with a notepad the next morning. Henry is gone. He left a note behind saying he was going to fix everything. “Or screw it all up.” Henry walks into the hippy woo-woo shop and asks for a dragon’s tear and a pinch of the sands of time. The shopkeeper can keep her kava root. Those are hunters signs in the window. He knows he’s in the right place. Without taking her eyes off of him, the woman cocks the sawed off under the counter. No, really. He should be on his way. Henry picks up a spoonful of yellow powder from the counter, speaks a sleepy-time incantation over it, and blows it in her face. The shopkeeper falls to the ground.

Henry already has an angel’s feather for the blood spell, as Dean discovers when he checks Baby’s trunk. I’m pretty sure the Live Journal servers crashed the night this episode aired from the metric ass tonne of new fan fiction explaining just how that item came to be in their possession. Sam jumps online to find any local shops selling real hoodoo and hits the police report of Goth Girl’s untimely demise. Dean will stop Henry from “Marty McFlying himself back to the 1950’s” while Sam tracks down Larry Ganem. Soon enough, Mrs. Larry is pouring him tea. Larry is surprised to hear that Henry survived, but there’s no point in revisiting what happened that night. “They’re gone. We’re gone. She killed us all that one night … but she did not get what she came for.” Sam knows Abaddon wants the box, and he needs to know everything there is to know about it. Mrs. Larry is suddenly all ears at the mention of the mysterious matchbox of mystery. Oh, dear. Oh, no. Larry tells him that in the box is the key. If there’s a key…then there has to be a lock. And when we find the lock, we can get the weapons, and then we can have the weapons. And the lock. We’ll still have the lock, I imagine, because we’ve opened it, and, of course, the initial key. And when they get all three of that crap, they will find “every object, scroll, spell, ever collected in a thousand years under one roof. It is the supernatural mother lode. Can you imagine what she would do with that?” There’s no way to stop Abaddon, but they can protect the trove. Larry writes down a set of coordinates. He tells Sam to take the key there and throw it in. “Shut the door forever. Walk away. It is the safest place on Earth. Warded against any evil ever created. It is impervious to any entry – except the key.” Sam warms my librarian’s heart by pearl clutching that all of that knowledge would be lost forever. “That is the price we have to pay for keeping it away from Abaddon.” Larry finally thinks to ask if Sam actually has the key, and he admits he does not. But his brother does. At that, Abaddon reveals herself. Mrs. Larry’s eyes flip black. She knocks Sam out with a single punch and dispatches Larry with a kitchen knife.

Dean finds Henry at the hoodoo shop, blood spell already in progress. He gets it. He’s read John’s journal too, more times than Henry can imagine, “and it hurts every time.” But Dean isn’t the one who let John down. Henry is. And he’s going to go back and give his son the life he deserves. “Not the one he was forced to live!” Henry can save John and stop Abaddon. Dean is all like, timeline corruption hypothesis. Henry may not like the future he has seen, and may be disappointed that Sam and Dean are “mouth breathing hunters, but you know what? We stopped the Apocalypse!” And stopping Abaddon just got a bit more complicated. She calls Dean from Sam’s phone. She’s reverted back to young red headed Josie’s body. She also ditched the poor ruined silk dress for Goth Girl’s t-shirt and leathers. She proposes “a good old fashioned horse trade. Henry and the key for your brother. Or he dies.” Henry is really, truly double secret probationally not doing the blood spell now. Dean can’t take that chance. “Not with Sammy on the hook now.” Henry insists he won’t abandon his son. Not again. He turns back to complete the spell. Dean puts him in a sleeper hold. Henry come to in the front seat of the Impala. He needs to understand. When John died, Dean couldn’t save him. “I never want that to happen to Sam. Again. Ever. If there’s a chance that I could save him, I’m going to do it.” Seriously, Henry. Ask him what he did the summer between Seasons 3 and 4 if you doubt his conviction. “He’s my brother. He’s the only family I’ve got”

They arrive at the appointed meeting place and Dean doesn’t hesitate to make the trade. Hunters may be short sighted, “but at least we’re not extinct.” He pulls his gun from his waistband. “You can do this standing or you can do it crawling. Your call.” Henry walks forward and Sam hurries to Dean. He cuts the ropes from Sam’s wrists and tells him to shut up. They’re leaving. Or not. Abaddon psychics the doors closed. They had a deal? Surprise! Demons lie. She laughs as she shoves her fist into Henry’s belly. Sam rushes forward, but Dean stops him. Henry gasps from the pain, but remains focused. He slips the handcuffs, puts the gun up under Abaddon’s chin, and fires. Hey, that tickles. Nice try. She pulls the box with the key to the lock to the trove out of Henry’s pocket, but jokers on her. It’s just a deck of cards. She tries the black goo Vulcan mind meld again but the smoke wisps out to nothing. She realizes she’s stuck in place. Henry carved a devil’s trap in the bullet now lodged in Abaddon’s brain. He knew the risk he was taking. That things could get ugly. “But you do that for blood.” Dean walks up and hacks off Abaddon’s head with a machete. “The demon trap in your noggin is going to keep you from smoking out. We’re going to cut you into little steaks and bury each strip under cement. You might not be dead, but you’ll wish you were.” From the floor, Henry gasps out that they did it. The adrenalin recedes and Dean remembers his grandfather is bleeding out on the floor. Maybe they should call Castiel. Maybe they should have called Castiel 45 minutes ago. Instead, Dean bends down and corrects Henry. He did it. “For a bookworm, that wasn’t bad.” Henry is sorry he judged them so quickly for being hunters. “I should have known better. You’re also Winchesters. As long as we’re alive, there’s always hope.” Henry reaches out and shakes Dean’s hand. He grasps Sam’s hand with his other. “I didn’t know my son as a man, but having met you two, I know I would have been proud of him.” Sam looks down at the box that Henry has pressed into his hand.

The boys return to the Men of Letters burial ground. Sam drives a simple, rough hewn marker into the earth. He gets it now, why Heaven wanted John and Mary together so badly. “The Winchesters and the Campbells. The brains and the brawn.” Dean is glad Sam can make some sense out of it. All he sees in their family tree is a whole lot of dead. He pulls the photo of Henry and wee!John from his pocket. Sam thinks their father looks happy. Dean rues that John never knew the truth. “Freaking time travel, man.” Sam wonders if it would have made a difference. If John had grown up with Henry. Dean brushes it aside. At the end of the day, John did the best he could in how he raised them. Sam gestures at the graves. They all did the best they could. He holds the box in his hand. “What are the chances that place is still standing?” It’s a chance they have to take. “I mean, we are legacies, right?